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updated Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - 8:11pm

The upcoming Georgia General Assembly session is almost predictable, a rarity for a legislative body seemingly dominated by rogue rangers who shoot at every imagined target existing.

Yes, they’re coming back Monday ... even the ones that don’t count and barely have a vote, like the minority Democrats.

But it is easy to anticipate this time will be considerably different, and perhaps milder on the nerves, than what most Georgians have come to expect.

For starters, legislators simply aren’t going to have to carve out extra time to enjoy the recreational amenities, fine dining and well-stocked bars of the “big city” of Atlanta because the new ethics guidelines have kicked in.

While there are loopholes aplenty, the reality is that for most legislators, particularly those not considered sufficiently powerful to be worth the risk of expense-account trickery, most “fun” will have to be paid out of their own $173 per diem during the session or their $17,342 annual pay.

Of course, that’s not the only reason legislators are expected to keep their noses to the grindstone rather than the four-star dinner plate. Indeed, this is expected to be perhaps the shortest session ever — starting Jan. 13 and ending at the allotted 40 work days around the second week in March after a nose-to-the-grindstone period of five-day weeks.

The reality is that this an election year for all of them — even such as the guiding-light governor — and they aren’t permitted to raise or accept campaign contributions while actually making decisions, writing laws and picking who gets tax money.

In the past that wasn’t so much of a problem, but the very first order of business this year is expected to be changing the state’s primary election, in which candidates of both parties have to fend off rivals, to May 20 [as the result of a federal judge’s ruling on overseas military ballots].

That’s almost two months earlier than the previous mid-July date.

It is no secret that the state has a whole lot more revenue coming in and available for spending than in years past marked by slash-and-burn policy actions.

So will reams of new funding go to repair the so many clearly broken obligations of state government — protecting the children under state supervision, fixing the ... understaffed prison system, actually supporting the new ... community-based juvenile-justice system?

It seems more likely, and has already been in open discussion, that the governor and legislators will mostly restore some funding to schools in particular, including mending the HOPE scholarship cuts that set many technical-college students adrift.

Abused children, prisoners, juveniles and the mentally limited are not “constituencies” to consider in an election year.

In a sense, Georgians appear to have transitioned away from having to worry about what might be the worst the General Assembly when in session might do.

Now they have a new concern, regarding a legislature that might well simply ignore what really needs doing because, most inconveniently, such might take too much time away from seeking re-election.

—Rome News-Tribune

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